God-parents Christian law, strong in the Greek Orthodox Church, weaker in the Roman Catholic, and forgotten in the Protestant, based in the fact that once a spiritual teacher begins to teach the disciple, he takes on the student's karma in connection with the occult sciences until the student becomes in turn a master.

 The god-parents "tacitly take upon themselves all the sins of the newly baptised child -- (anointed, as at the initiation, a mystery truly!) -- until the day when the child becomes a responsible unit, knowing good and evil" (BCW 9:156, cf 9:285-6).

(See also: God-man, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Goetia (Greek) (from goes enchanter, sorcerer)

Also goety. One who uses incantations by song or speech, one who holds others under the spell of sound, chants, or incantations. Porphyry condemns it as black magic, distinguishing it from theurgy or divine magic; and it has in general been so contrasted.

(See also: God-wisdom, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Deity or God. Intelligence and will superior to the human, forming the intelligent and vital governing essence of the universe, whether this universe be large or small.

The principal views as to the nature of deity may be classed as

1)    pantheistic,

2)    polytheistic,

3)    henotheistic, and

4)    monotheistic.

Pantheism, which views the divine as immanent in all nature and yet transcendent in its higher parts, is characteristic of certain Occidental philosophical systems and of all Oriental systems.

Polytheism implies the recognition of an indefinite number of deific powers in the universe, the plural manifestations of the ever immanent, ever perduring, and manifest-unmanifest One. Polytheism is thus a logical development of pantheism.

Henotheism is the belief in one god, but not the exclusion of others, such as is found in the Jewish scriptures, where the ancient Hebrews frankly worshiped a tribal deity and fully recognized the existence of other tribal deities.

Monotheism is the belief in only one god, as is found in Christianity and Islam. These religions, in inheriting the Jewish tradition, have confounded this merely personal and local conception with the First Cause of the universe, which in theosophy would be called the formative cosmic Third Logos, thus producing an inconsistent idea of a God who is both infinite, delimited, and personal in character, with an intuition, however, of the necessarily impersonal cosmic intelligent root of all.

In theosophical philosophy, the cosmic divine in the hierarchical sense is both transcendent and immanent, during manifestation breaking as it were into innumerable rays which produce the various deific powers in inner and outer nature; each such immanent divinity, however, itself emanating from the all-encompassing and forever unmanifest Rootless Root or parabrahman.

The various universes, sometimes referred to as sparks of eternity, spring from parabrahman at periodic intervals called manvantaras, and then resolve back into the pre-manvantaric condition or pralaya, only to issue forth again when the pralaya of whatever magnitude has run its course. Therefore, at one and the same time divinity is transcendent and immanent, eternal and unmanifest, while its rays or cosmic sparks of whatever magnitude are periodic and manifested. Hence from each such manifested One or cosmic hierarch proceed the multiple rays, to which in various theogonies are given names and attributes of superior deities. Thus the words god and deity become generic, and the general definition may be applied to the core of the core of any being, great or small, cosmic or human, for all are sparks of the cosmic flame of life.

The word deity, in the sense of beings which are more spiritual than the human being of today, may be applied to the divine rulers of human races before the times of the demigods and heroes; or more generally to an indefinite range of nonphysical beings, spiritual or ethereal in character, including among the latter the so-called "spirits of the elements."

See also GOD; GOD(S)

(See also: Deity, God, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

God-man Mankind after the change in the third root-race when animal humanity became incarnate devas because of the overshadowing incarnations of the manasaputras. Also manas (mind) in alliance with atma-buddhi, as contrasted with manas in alliance with the lower principles -- the latter being simply and merely human.

Sometimes used to describe the avataras appearing in the human race at periodic intervals, or again to describe buddhas or other spiritual-human beings.

(See also: God-man, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Lunar Gods If moon stands for the feminine side of nature, it is Isis, the Great Mother; and thus a lunar god may be a very august being, and even with some nations regarded as superior to and prior to the masculine side.

On the other hand, moon may stand for the nether pole of manifestation and thus lunar gods may stand in contrast with solar gods, as pertaining to an inferior, exoteric, or materialistic cultus. The moon is said to be threefold, e.g., Diana-Hecate-Luna, ruling over the superior, inferior, and middle worlds. Lunar gods may also apply to the lunar pitris.

"Called in India the Fathers, 'Pitris' or the lunar ancestors. They are subdivided, like the rest, into seven classes or Hierarchies. In Egypt although the moon received less worship than in Chaldea or India, still Isis stands as the representative of Luna-Lunus, 'the celestial Hermaphrodite.' Strange enough while the modern connect the moon only with lunacy and generation, the ancient nations, who knew better, have, individually and collectively, connected their 'wisdom gods' with it.

Thus in Egypt the lunar gods are Thoth-Hermes and Chons; in India it is Budha, the Son of Soma, the moon; in Chaldea Nebo is the lunar god of Secret Wisdom, etc., etc. The wife of Thoth, Sifix, the lunar goddess, holds a pole with five rays of the five-points star, symbol of man, the Microcosm, in distinction from the Septenary Macrocosm.

As in all theogonies a goddess precedes a god, on the principle most likely that the chick can hardly precede its egg, in Chaldea the moon was held as older and more venerable than the Sun, because, as they said, darkness precedes light at every periodical rebirth (or 'creation') of the universe.

Osiris although connected with the Sun and a Solar god is, nevertheless, born on Mount Sinai, because Sin is the Chaldeo-Assyrian word for the moon; so was Dio-Nysos, god of Nyssi or Nisi, which latter appellation was that of Sinai in Egypt, where it was called Mount Nissa" (TG 192-3).

(See also: Lunar Gods, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

God (Gods) and Goddess (Goddesses) A generalizing term signifying all self-conscious entities superior to humankind, most often restricted to the three dhyani-chohanic kingdoms. The gods have differing places in nature's hierarchical scheme, running through innumerable grades of cosmic intelligences. Theosophy teaches that human beings who successfully reach the seventh round on this earth chain will pass, at the conclusion of this last round, into the kingdom superior to the human, that of the lowest dhyani-chohans.

One function of dhyani-chohans (gods or demigods of a lower type) is the watching over of all hierarchies below them, some being guardians of the human host, others guarding and protecting the less evolved kingdoms. The higher hierarchical ranges of gods or divinities in our universe "are Entities of the higher worlds in the hierarchy of Being, so immeasurably high that, to us, they must appear as Gods, and collectively -- God. . . . To the highest, we are taught, belong the seven orders of the purely divine Spirits; to the six lower ones belong hierarchies that can occasionally be seen and heard by men, and who do communicate with their progeny of the Earth; which progeny is indissoluble linked with them, each principle in man having its direct source in the nature of those great Beings, who furnish us with the respective invisible elements in us" (SD 1:133).

These beings belong to two general divisions, the arupa (formless) and the rupa (form) divinities. Those having forms should not be imagined as necessarily having human forms as in the ancient pantheons, yet rupa gods do have highly ethereal forms, some perhaps resembling the present human shape and others of quite different construction. But the arupa divinities are to our power of imagination "beings of pure intelligence and of understanding, pure essences, pure spirits, formless as we conceive form" (Fund 347).

Tradition has it that in the immemorial past, certain lower gods associated intimately with their children, humanity, on this globe; but as time went by and mankind became more immersed in material pursuits, people grew to become increasingly forgetful of their divine origin and of the presence of the shining divinities instructing and guiding their forebears, so that the gods and demigods were remembered only in mythologies and religious metaphors of the various races.

What did the ancients mean by their gods and goddesses? They were intended to represent the guiding intelligences present within or in back of all invisible secrets, as well as astral and physical manifestations of nature. During the third root-race there were beings who were

"endowed with the sacred fire from the spark of higher and then independent Beings, who were the psychic and spiritual parents of Man, as the lower Pitar Devata (the Pitris) were the progenitors of his physical body. That Third and holy Race consisted of men who, at their zenith, were described as, 'towering giants of godly strength and beauty, and the depositaries of all the mysteries of Heaven and Earth.'. . .

". . . the chief gods and heroes of the Fourth and Fifth Races, as of later antiquity, are the deified images of these men of the Third. The days of their physiological purity, and those of their so-called Fall, have equally survived in the hearts and memories of their descendants. Hence, the dual nature shown in those gods, both virtue and sin being exalted to their highest degree, in the biographies composed by posterity" (SD 2:171-2).

The primeval human deity worship degenerated during the fourth root-race (the Atlantean), the ideal at first becoming confused with the form, and the latter finally almost superseding the spirit -- thus in the relatively complete materialization of idea into form, the later Atlanteans in time began to worship themselves, what was to them the powers of nature appearing through themselves as human beings; the degeneration of the ideal proceeding so far that ultimately the worst kind of idol worship became relatively universal, except for the seed of the newer and somewhat higher mankind of the fifth root-race then beginning.

"The moderns are satisfied with worshipping the male heroes of the Fourth race, who created gods after their own sexual image, whereas the gods of primeval mankind were 'male and female,' " i.e., hermaphrodite (SD 2:135).

See also DEITY

(See also: God, Goddess, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

God (Gods) and Goddess (Goddesses) A generalizing term signifying all self-conscious entities superior to humankind, most often restricted to the three dhyani-chohanic kingdoms. The gods have differing places in nature's hierarchical scheme, running through innumerable grades of cosmic intelligences. Theosophy teaches that human beings who successfully reach the seventh round on this earth chain will pass, at the conclusion of this last round, into the kingdom superior to the human, that of the lowest dhyani-chohans.

One function of dhyani-chohans (gods or demigods of a lower type) is the watching over of all hierarchies below them, some being guardians of the human host, others guarding and protecting the less evolved kingdoms. The higher hierarchical ranges of gods or divinities in our universe "are Entities of the higher worlds in the hierarchy of Being, so immeasurably high that, to us, they must appear as Gods, and collectively -- God. . . . To the highest, we are taught, belong the seven orders of the purely divine Spirits; to the six lower ones belong hierarchies that can occasionally be seen and heard by men, and who do communicate with their progeny of the Earth; which progeny is indissoluble linked with them, each principle in man having its direct source in the nature of those great Beings, who furnish us with the respective invisible elements in us" (SD 1:133).

These beings belong to two general divisions, the arupa (formless) and the rupa (form) divinities. Those having forms should not be imagined as necessarily having human forms as in the ancient pantheons, yet rupa gods do have highly ethereal forms, some perhaps resembling the present human shape and others of quite different construction. But the arupa divinities are to our power of imagination "beings of pure intelligence and of understanding, pure essences, pure spirits, formless as we conceive form" (Fund 347).

Tradition has it that in the immemorial past, certain lower gods associated intimately with their children, humanity, on this globe; but as time went by and mankind became more immersed in material pursuits, people grew to become increasingly forgetful of their divine origin and of the presence of the shining divinities instructing and guiding their forebears, so that the gods and demigods were remembered only in mythologies and religious metaphors of the various races.

What did the ancients mean by their gods and goddesses? They were intended to represent the guiding intelligences present within or in back of all invisible secrets, as well as astral and physical manifestations of nature. During the third root-race there were beings who were

"endowed with the sacred fire from the spark of higher and then independent Beings, who were the psychic and spiritual parents of Man, as the lower Pitar Devata (the Pitris) were the progenitors of his physical body. That Third and holy Race consisted of men who, at their zenith, were described as, 'towering giants of godly strength and beauty, and the depositaries of all the mysteries of Heaven and Earth.'. . .

". . . the chief gods and heroes of the Fourth and Fifth Races, as of later antiquity, are the deified images of these men of the Third. The days of their physiological purity, and those of their so-called Fall, have equally survived in the hearts and memories of their descendants. Hence, the dual nature shown in those gods, both virtue and sin being exalted to their highest degree, in the biographies composed by posterity" (SD 2:171-2).

The primeval human deity worship degenerated during the fourth root-race (the Atlantean), the ideal at first becoming confused with the form, and the latter finally almost superseding the spirit -- thus in the relatively complete materialization of idea into form, the later Atlanteans in time began to worship themselves, what was to them the powers of nature appearing through themselves as human beings; the degeneration of the ideal proceeding so far that ultimately the worst kind of idol worship became relatively universal, except for the seed of the newer and somewhat higher mankind of the fifth root-race then beginning.

"The moderns are satisfied with worshipping the male heroes of the Fourth race, who created gods after their own sexual image, whereas the gods of primeval mankind were 'male and female,' " i.e., hermaphrodite (SD 2:135).

See also DEITY

(See also: God, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

God-sparks When evolution starts on the downward arc, the spiritual essence appears as a vast host of individual monads or spiritual, conscious atoms which, because of their lack of the self-conscious human condition, are often termed unself-conscious god-sparks -- although this does not mean that they lack self-consciousness on their own plane, for these monads never leave their own planes.

To speak of a monad incarnating means that a ray projected from the monad "descends" from its plane in a minor avataric sense to inflame the nascent manasic element or power in lower beings, precisely as took place in the cases of the manasaputras.

These god-sparks, being the spiritual monads of living entities, gradually emanate from themselves the successive vestures through which they manifest, the process taking place serially and ladder-fashion on the downward arc; with the eventual result that, at the end of the ascending arc, the unself-conscious god-sparks become self-conscious gods, which means that the self-conscious humanity of them becomes linked self-consciously to the self-consciousness of the monads on their own plane.

(See also: God-sparks, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

God-sparks When evolution starts on the downward arc, the spiritual essence appears as a vast host of individual monads or spiritual, conscious atoms which, because of their lack of the self-conscious human condition, are often termed unself-conscious god-sparks -- although this does not mean that they lack self-consciousness on their own plane, for these monads never leave their own planes.

To speak of a monad incarnating means that a ray projected from the monad "descends" from its plane in a minor avataric sense to inflame the nascent manasic element or power in lower beings, precisely as took place in the cases of the manasaputras.

These god-sparks, being the spiritual monads of living entities, gradually emanate from themselves the successive vestures through which they manifest, the process taking place serially and ladder-fashion on the downward arc; with the eventual result that, at the end of the ascending arc, the unself-conscious god-sparks become self-conscious gods, which means that the self-conscious humanity of them becomes linked self-consciously to the self-consciousness of the monads on their own plane.

(See also: God-parents, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Sons of God An idea, containing divine as well as historic events, known among all ancient peoples.

In ancient Biblical Hebrew, these sons of the Divine or sons of God are called the Benei 'Elohim (sons of the 'elohim) who in Genesis 6 "descend" in order to gain experience by incarnation in astral-physical bodies. They are the so-called fallen angels, one class of which corresponds to manasaputras. Also used for those evolved beings, or men graduated from lower classes of human experience, who at a primordial period descended and taught humanity the arts and sciences which were preserved and afterwards practiced by the initiates of the different root-races. Again, used of men of the seventh root-race, who are to be born of immaculate parents when they appear ages hence.

Elsewhere these sons of God are mystically spoken of as sons of Light, for the various hierarchies generalized under these phrases are all emanations from the manifest or Third Logos.

(See also: Sons of God, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

The Name of God, In Welsh Enw Duw, written. This name was sounded at the birth of the universe, "whereupon latency flashed into existence more swiftly than the lightning reaches its home." This sacred word is given as O I W -- the Welsh w being a vowel, equivalent to the Sanskrit u. But in Cywydd Cyfrinach ("The Poem of the Secret," by Rhys Goch o Eryri, c. 11th century), a poem on this sacred word, we are told that the letters of it are to be taken from the words Awen and Menw, which would suggest the Sanskrit pranava Aum.

(See also: Name of God, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Lunar Gods. Called in India the Fathers, "Pitris" or the lunar ancestors.

They are subdivided, like the rest, into seven classes or Hierarchies, In Egypt although the moon received less worship than in Chaldea or India, still Isis stands as the representative of Luna-Lunus, "the celestial Hermaphrodite". Strange enough while the modern connect the moon only with lunacy and generation, the ancient nations, who knew better, have, individually and collectively, connected their "wisdom gods" with it. Thus in Egypt the lunar gods are Thoth, Hermes and Chons; in India it is Budha, the Son of Soma, the moon; in Chaldea Nebo is the lunar god of Secret Wisdom, etc., etc.

The wife of Thoth, Sifix, the lunar goddess, holds a pole with five rays or the five-pointed star, symbol of man, the Microcosm, in distinction from the Septenary Macrocosm. As in all theogonies a goddess precedes a god, on the principle most likely that the chick can hardly precede its egg, in Chaldea the moon was held as older and more venerable than the Sun, because, as they said, darkness precedes light at every periodical rebirth (or "creation") of the universe. Osiris although connected with the Sun and a Solar god is, nevertheless, born on Mount Sinai, because Sin is the Chaldeo-Assyrian word for the moon; so was Dio-Nysos, god of Nyssi or Nisi, which latter appelation was that of Sinai in Egypt, where it was called Mount Nissa.

The crescent is not - as proven by many writers - an ensign of the Turks, but was adopted by Christians for their symbol before the Mahommedans. For ages the crescent was the emblem of the Chaldean Astarte, the Egyptian Isis, and the Greek Diana, all of them Queens of Heaven, and finally became the emblem of Mary the Virgin. "The Greek Christian Empire of Constantinople held it as their palladium. Upon the conquest by the Turks, the Sultan adopted it . . . and since that, the crescent has been made to oppose the idea of the cross". (Eg. Belief.)

(See also: Lunar Gods, Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary, )

King

(See also: God name, Witchcraft, Wicca, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

“Thou Art God or Thou Art Goddess:”

A statement of divine immanence common among Neopagans, originally from Robert Heinlein’s book, Stranger in a Strange Land.

(See also: Thou Art God, Goddess, Pagan, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

Kingdom of Heaven, Kingdom of God In the New Testament, used by John the Baptist, Jesus, and St. Paul; it indicates a state of relative spiritual completion and attainment, not merely the afterdeath state of the "righteous" or "saved," as seen in the statement, "the kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:21). Blavatsky interprets the answer in the Gospel of the Egyptians as to when the kingdom of heaven will come -- "When the Two has been made One, and the Outward has become as the Inward, and the Male with the Female neither Male nor Female" -- as signifying among other things, 1) the union of lower manas with the higher manas, the self-conscious raising of the personality to the individuality; and 2) the return of humankind to the androgynous state in future root-races.

"Thus this Kingdom may be attained by individuals now, and by mankind in Races to come" (BCW 13:48-9; 14:55; ET).

(See also: Kingdom of Heaven, Kingdom of God, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Gods: Mahadevas, "great beings of light."

In Dancing with Siva, the plural form of God refers to extremely advanced beings existing in their self-effulgent soul bodies in the causal plane.

The meaning of Gods is best seen in the phrase, "God and the Gods," referring to the Supreme God- Siva- and the Mahadevas who are His creation.

See: Mahadeva.

(See also: Gods, Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

God's power:

See: Shakti.

(See also: God's power, Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

A Theosophical definition of Gods :

Gods

The old pantheons were builded upon an ancient and esoteric wisdom which taught, under the guise of a public mythology, profound secrets of the structure and operations of the universe which surrounds us. The entire human race has believed in gods, has believed in beings superior to men; the ancients all said that men are the "children" of these gods, and that from these superior beings, existent in the azure spaces, men draw all that in them is; and, furthermore, that men themselves, as children of the gods, are in their inmost essence divine beings linked forever with the boundless universe of which each human being, just as is the case with every other entity everywhere, is an inseparable part. This is a truly sublime conception.

One should not think of human forms when the theosophist speaks of the gods; we mean the arupa  - the "formless"  - entities, beings of pure intelligence and understanding, relatively pure essences, relatively pure spirits, formless as we physical humans conceive form. The gods are the higher inhabitants of nature. They are intrinsic portions of nature itself, for they are its informing principles. They are as much subject to the wills and energies of still higher beings  - call these wills and energies the "laws" of higher beings, if you will  - as we are, and as are the kingdoms of nature below us.

The ancients put realities, living beings, in the place of laws which, as Occidentals use the term, are only abstractions  - an expression for the action of entities in nature; the ancients did not cheat themselves so easily with words. They called them gods, spiritual entities. Not one single great thinker of the ancients, until the Christian era, ever talked about laws of nature, as if these laws were living entities, as if these abstractions were actual entities which did things. Did the laws of navigation ever navigate a ship? Does the law of gravity pull the planets together? Does it unite or pull the atoms together? This word laws is simply a mental abstraction signifying unerring action of conscious and semi-conscious energies in nature.

See also: Gods , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

A Christian theological definition of Decrees of God according to CARM - The Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry:

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Decrees of God

See also: Decrees of God , Christianity, Body Mind and Soul

A Christian theological definition of False Gods according to CARM - The Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry:

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False Gods

See also: False Gods , Christianity, Body Mind and Soul

A Christian theological definition of Kingdom of God according to CARM - The Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry:

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Kingdom of God

See also: Kingdom of God , Christianity, Body Mind and Soul

A Christian theological definition of Image of God according to CARM - The Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry:

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Image of God

See also: Image of God , Christianity, Body Mind and Soul